The Walmart Creator program is Walmart's affiliate program for social creators: you apply at creator.walmart.com, and if Walmart approves you, you earn a commission when shoppers buy through your links. Walmart's terms, last updated September 2026, ask for age 18 or older, US residence and an active Walmart.com or SamsClub.com account, and name no follower minimum.

Everything below about the program comes from Walmart's own pages, read on 12 October 2026: the program terms, the influencer guidelines and the guides on creator.walmart.com. Walmart can change all of them at any time, so treat the date as a stamp, not a promise.

Who can join Walmart Creator?

You can apply if you are 18 or older, live in the United States, have an active Walmart.com or SamsClub.com account and do not work for Walmart or Sam's Club. That list is Section 1 of Walmart's terms. The terms also ask you to link at least one public social account, and Walmart may look at your public accounts to check they suit the brand.

You may see a 1,000-follower minimum quoted elsewhere. The terms as published today contain no follower count, and Walmart's own guide says the program accepts creators of all backgrounds, experience levels and follower sizes. Walmart still reviews every application and can accept or reject it at its own discretion. If you are turned down, the terms say you can apply again at any time.

The same terms also cover a Sam's Club Creator program, with its own contact address. Purchases made at Sam's Club do not earn a commission under the Walmart program.

How to become a Walmart creator in five steps

You apply through the online portal, and the whole route is five steps:

  1. Select Apply now at creator.walmart.com and create an account.
  2. Share some information about yourself and your platform, and link at least one public social account.
  3. Wait for Walmart's review. Walmart gives no review time: its FAQ says the wait may vary and that you get an email once you are approved.
  4. Once approved, finish the payout setup in Impact, the platform Walmart uses to pay creators.
  5. Publish your Storefront from a desktop, then add its link to your Instagram profile.

Instagram's Help Center says you can add up to five websites to your profile, so the Storefront link can sit next to your other links. Walmart's own guides tell creators to put the Storefront link in every bio.

What happens after my Walmart creator application is approved?

Setup comes first. Walmart's setup guide asks you to finish it within 48 hours to avoid payout delays:

  • Tax form and bank details in Impact. The guide names a W-9 for US creators.
  • Identity verification in Impact. Walmart calls this the step creators miss most often, and commissions cannot be released until it is done.
  • Payout settings. The guide lists a $10 minimum payout.
  • Your Storefront. It can only be published from a desktop, and mobile edits alone cannot publish it. The handle is permanent, so Walmart suggests matching it to your social handles.

After that you can make links three ways, according to Walmart: a Chrome extension with a Get Link button on Walmart.com, a link generator at creator.walmart.com where you paste a product address, or a quicklink copied from the Walmart app. Walmart suggests collections of 5 to 15 items built around an occasion, such as a gift guide, rather than a loose list of favorites.

Walmart's post of 12 November 2025 adds two newer features: a tiered bonus program that rewards consistent posting and strong sales, and Walmart Creator Collabs, which offers higher commissions on selected Marketplace products. That post lists no tiers, thresholds or amounts.

How much does Walmart pay creators?

Walmart's public pages publish no rate card. Its guide says each product carries a different referral fee, always a percentage of the product's price, and that the dashboard lets you search high-earning products by percentage. Rates and the exact attribution window sit in the Payout Terms, which Walmart shows to members after login. We could not read them, so this page quotes no rates.

Walmart's earning guide describes the window this way: when someone clicks your link, you earn on anything they buy from Walmart over the next 14 days, not only the product you shared. The terms leave that number to the Payout Terms, so confirm it in your account.

A sale only earns when:

  • the shopper's browser has cookies switched on;
  • they reach Walmart through your link and come back directly, not through another affiliate link;
  • they buy on Walmart's site, accept delivery and pay in full.

Purchases that start in a search engine's free results, without first passing through your content, earn nothing. So do Sam's Club, Walmart Pharmacy, Travel, Financial Services, tires and gift card purchases. The commission is worked out on the sale price, without shipping, handling, gift wrapping, rebates, refunds, returns, chargebacks, cancellations or tax. If a customer returns an item before the 30-day locking period ends, the commission is taken off your next monthly payment.

Payments go through Impact to a US bank account. The terms list using a foreign bank account for payouts among the things creators may not do.

Is the Walmart influencer program the same thing?

Yes. Walmart's own earning guide calls Walmart Creator its official affiliate and influencer program, so a search for the influencer program leads to the same sign-up at creator.walmart.com.

Walmart also runs a separate Walmart Affiliate Program at affiliates.walmart.com, with its own member center and data feeds. Walmart's creator guides send social creators to creator.walmart.com, so that is the program this page covers.

What rules do Walmart creators have to follow?

Disclose every link, use only Walmart-issued links and offer nothing in exchange for clicks. The detail sits in the terms and in Walmart's influencer guidelines:

  • Disclosure. Label endorsements with #WalmartPartner or "paid link". The guidelines put #WalmartPartner first among your hashtags and before the See more cut. In video, the disclosure has to be spoken and shown on screen.
  • Links. Only Walmart-issued links count, and they must lead straight to Walmart. The terms bar shortening or obscuring a link in a way that could mislead or confuse a shopper.
  • No rewards for clicking. The terms bar offering money, discounts, points or a sweepstakes entry for using your links. The guidelines also bar calls to action for giveaways and contests.
  • Content. No "dupe" comparisons with other brands, no promoting Walmart's pharmacy, music only from the platform's royalty-free library, and AI-generated visuals must match the real product and be flagged when they change how it looks.
  • Reuse. The terms give Walmart a license to reuse content you make for the program in its own marketing, without further payment.

Instagram allows it in general: someone comments a keyword, and the automation replies in public and sends one private message with a link, within 7 days of the comment. Whether Walmart's rules cover a link sent that way is not stated, so ask Walmart before you build it. Three things to settle first:

  1. Whether a DM counts as a place for a link. The terms say commission can come from links in your social media content and name websites, social media posts and Storefronts. They do not mention direct messages.
  2. Whether a rewritten link is allowed. inDM swaps each link it delivers for an address on its own redirect domain, which is how it counts taps, then forwards the person on (how that tracking works). Walmart's terms require links to go directly and exclusively to Walmart and bar shorteners only where they could mislead or confuse. They say nothing about tracked redirects, and we have not asked Walmart.
  3. Disclosure and gates. Put #WalmartPartner in the DM text as well as on the public post. Leave the email and follow gates off a Walmart link: the terms list asking viewers for email addresses among the content a link may not sit near, and the guidelines bar calls to action for engagement that is not about the brand, which a follow ask could fall under.

The people to ask are Walmart's program team, at the address the terms give: WalmartCreator@walmart.com. If the answer is yes, setup is ordinary: follow the comment-to-DM setup guide, pick a plain keyword with the keyword guide and see how affiliate creators run it. If the answer is no, the route Walmart's guides describe still works: your Storefront link in your profile, and a public post that tells people where to find it.

Target runs three separate creator programs with different rules, laid out in how the Target creator program works.

Where this stops working

  • The money is behind a login. The rate card, the Payout Terms and the dashboard are visible to approved members only, and we could not read them, so no rate is quoted here.
  • No timeline. Walmart publishes no acceptance rate and no review time.
  • DMs are unanswered. Nothing Walmart has published addresses links sent by direct message, and nothing here is Walmart's answer.
  • The terms move. Section 16 lets Walmart change them at any time, and joining means accepting the current version. We read them on 12 October 2026.
  • United States only. Residence, content audience and bank account are all tied to the US.

Reading Walmart's own pages first means you know what the application asks, and which three questions to put to Walmart before a Walmart link goes into a DM.